


The Argument for Transman Qrow

by akisawana



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Trans Male Character, theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 19:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16898310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: A nonfiction analysis of the evidence that Qrow was AFAB and transitioned sometime shortly before or during his time at Beacon.





	The Argument for Transman Qrow

**Author's Note:**

> Note the first: Thank you zopponde for graciously agreeing to look over my work. Any missteps remaining are, of course my own.
> 
> Note the second: I wrote this in good faith. If I have misunderstood or poorly phrased something, please believe me that I meant no offense, and please drop me a line so I can correct my error.

Let me tell you a story.

 

Once upon a time, a boy and his sister were adopted by a tribe of bandits. These bandits lived in a camp with only the most rudimentary of medical care, with only a little contact with the outside world. The boy never quite fit in, never really felt accepted. When he and his sister were older, they were sent to school in a large city, trusted to learn specific skills and bring them back to the tribe. And for a myriad of reasons, the boy never returned though his sister did. Most of those reasons we all know; the tribe was made up of murderers and thieves, he found another family and a more noble purpose.

 

I’m offering one last one. That the boy was born with a bit of a genetic mixup, that he was born with a body more commonly associated with women and so he was assumed to be female until he was old enough to correct them. That when he went to the school he finally had access to the treatment that would give him the body he should have been born with. That Qrow Branwen, Ruby and Yang’s beloved drunkle, is a transman. And while I’m not stating with a hundred percent certainty that the story was written with that in mind, should it be revealed at some time in the future the groundwork has been laid.

 

Now the evidence is somewhat thin, as it should be. Qrow is a complex, three-dimensional character with a life and an arc that has very little to do with what is or isn’t in his pants. Some of it is almost meaningless -like how Raven calls him “little brother,” or how easily he slips in and out of his skin into the form of a bird. Some of it could have other explanations, like his references to never being fully accepted before attending Beacon, like his devotion to Ozpin.

 

Ozpin has granted a portion of his magic to five women and one man. Maybe that’s too small a sample size to draw conclusions from. Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to give Qrow the form of a bird if he had a Y-chromosome.

 

But Qrow was called that long before Ozpin offered him the transformation. Qrow was named after his semblance and the bad luck that followed him. A semblance is a reflection of one’s personality, after all. A semblance is unlocked later in life, and a passive semblance is unusual. How long did it take for Qrow to realize what his semblance was? How old was he when he took the name Qrow?

 

It’s got a Q and no U, look me in the eye and tell me that is not the name a teenage emo kid came up with. I wonder what they called him before that.

 

That’s not the only piece of evidence in volume four, and now we come to what is the strongest argument, and truly the only one that strays into Doylist territory. When Tyrian injures Qrow, they slap a bandage on  _ over _ his shirt.

 

Over the dirty shirt he’s been wearing for twenty years. 

 

Now, this is not a mere convenience of animation. In the same volume, Sun was stabbed as well, and he was animated with not only a bandage but a new shirtless model. The animators made a choice, and I doubt it was to illustrate the disaster that is getting injured miles from trained medical professionals. The most basic first aid training includes properly cleaning a wound by removing the clothing from the affected area. That is literally step one for poisoning, lacerations, and any time there is a concern for swelling.

 

So why then did they not? Why did Qrow not remove it for proper cleaning and then replace it? What is under Qrow’s shirt that he doesn’t want the kids to see? I don’t begrudge a man his privacy. I can sympathize with him not wanting to explain surgical scars or a binder, or whatever’s under there. But that’s a choice made on the showrunners’ parts from a Doylist perspective, and a choice Qrow made if you take a Watsonian point of view.

 

The evidence, as I said, is thin. A handful of lines easily explained away, a single choice to draw a bandage over a shirt, some life choices that could have nothing to do with something so personal and private. Perhaps the whole theory will be thrown out by some incontrovertible piece of evidence later, or never addressed at all.

 

But perhaps, just perhaps, it is correct.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading


End file.
